Cicadas? Really? Oh 2024, you actually are something. A bissextile year. An Olympic 12 months. An election 12 months (nothing to see here on that front). A historic eclipse, followed by historic solar storms that projected the Northern Lights all the best way into the South (those “Northern” Lights should really work on their branding). Also, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and tornadoes—it could feel as if the world is in some kind of cosmic tailspin. And now, we get a plague of massive flying creepy-crawlies too? What is that this, Exodus?
What Is the Cicada Phenomenon?
Like it or not, trillions of cicadas collectively referred to as Brood XIX and Brood XIII have begun emerging this 12 months in multiple states, the results of a rare, double-brood event. One of those normally shows up every thirteen years, while the opposite reveals its hideous face every seventeen years (no offense to any cicadas reading this text—I’m sure you’re quite handsome). Each of those broods instinctively waits underground for the right soil conditions before venturing out of their subterranean abodes to eat, mate, and die. But in fact, the dying part doesn’t occur before all of them land in your lawn mower at the identical time like some galactic arthropod mothership.
This 12 months’s cicada phenomenon affects seventeen states across the Southeast and Midwest. I call it a “phenomenon” because these two broods haven’t emerged together since 1803, and so they won’t accomplish that again until 2245. It’s just basic math.
Or is it? (Cue dark, enigmatic music.)
Is the Current Swarm of Cicadas a Sign of the End Times?
We hear concerning the mysterious implications of strange, natural phenomena each day within the news. In fact, bet your life has been affected not directly by all of the weirdness of the past few years. For me, a devastating tornado hit our little town near Nashville, Tennessee, in 2020, destroying schools, churches, and houses—including the house of one in all my best friends, who can be our lead pastor. Miraculously, his family narrowly avoided injury. Tragically, the identical can’t be said of many others.
With a lot alarming chaos swirling all about us on a regular basis, you’ve probably heard someone say: “It’s an indication of the times! The end is near!” Indeed, church marquees and Facebook posts swarm with such sentiments, referencing scriptures like Matthew 24:7 (NIV):
“Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There might be famines and earthquakes in various places.”
It’s no wonder that some Christians—and never just a few televangelists and pastors—often proclaim that what we’re seeing in our world today is the literal success of such prophecies.
To be clear, I’m not saying that the strange phenomena of recent years are unrelated to biblical references concerning the earth’s groaning for a future and everlasting resolution that God guarantees will someday unfold. But if we’re not careful, we will begin interpreting all things mysterious or anomalous as cosmic signs of impending doom, even after they may or will not be actually related to the tip of the world. Furthermore, the energy modern Christians can devote to such hypotheticals often leads us to unhealthy obsessions that don’t produce the sense of Spirit-led calm, contentment, or confidence that ought to characterize those trusting in God’s ultimate care over all things. Instead, we develop into fearful (or enthusiastic) alarmists who incessantly watch the colour of the skies or ponder the cloudy concepts of the newest insect infestation greater than we lean into the clear, clarion invitations of Scripture to day by day live within the ways of Christ.
We develop into too obsessive about ruminating over cicadas to recollect to rest by still waters.
Why Is it Important to Avoid Irrelevant End Times Speculations?
Thinking about cicadas and earthquakes and solar storms (oh my!) isn’t a sin, but neither is it a path to right considering. So what’s? The Seventeenth-century theologian Rupertus Meldenius labeled this path because the “essentials.” Non-essential topics could also be interesting and even essential, but they are usually not essential to completely experiencing the life and effectiveness Christ intends for every of us.
The Holy Spirit led early Church leaders into similar patterns of considering, which led to the event of repeatable statements just like the Apostles and Nicene Creeds. God wanted the growing variety of Christians somewhere else with vastly diverse contexts and experiences to have the ability to know with confidence what was essential to their collective faith and unity, and what was merely secondary or tertiary. Cicadas definitely fall into the second category. Such topics could also be interesting, but irrespective of how much you study them, write books about them, sell survival kits to arrange for them, discuss them in your podcast, or preach them out of your pulpit, they can’t produce life in someone’s heart.
Only the essentials of the gospel try this.
In Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis commented on the facility non-essential emphases need to distract Christians from what truly produces life inside us. Writing from the attitude of a demon who’s attempting to deceive people, Screwtape says, “What we would like, if men develop into Christians in any respect, is to maintain them within the frame of mind I call ‘Christianity And.’ You know—Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they have to be Christians allow them to at the very least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the religion itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing.”
“Christianity and Cicadas” would definitely fall into this category, a subcategory of Lewis’s “Christianity and the Crisis.”
How Does Our Faith Help Us Determine What Is Real?
When it involves matters of eschatology (end-times theology), that are most definitely biblical in nature, we should always be open to reading these scriptures without removing the mysteries divinely embedded between the lines and adding our own “And” in the combination. Beware when someone makes a definitive statement about something in the longer term about which Jesus himself refused to make definitive statements.
To be interested by the tip of the world is natural and human, and we’re not the primary disciples to be so. After his resurrection and before his ascension, Jesus’s disciples voiced their very own curiosities concerning the end of the world as they knew it; that’s, the tip of Roman occupation and the start of the Messiah’s rule from the restored nation of Israel. After all, the Messiah was standing right in front of them, so it made sense to ask. But Jesus’s response didn’t remove the mystery concerning the end times in any respect. However, it did remove the mystery of what they ought to be specializing in.
“He said to them: ‘It isn’t so that you can know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you’ll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and also you might be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’” – Acts 1:7-8 NIV
In other words, such topics are obviously essential, but God doesn’t want you to completely know the whole lot about them. However, he does want you to completely know and embrace the life you have already got straight away by fully pursuing and living out the ways of Christ. 14th-century German theologian Thomas à Kempis identified the risks of specializing in that which is meant to be a mystery versus that which is meant to be plainly understood. “What good is there in arguing about esoteric things [abstract concepts understood by few], things that will not matter on Judgment Day even when we remained at all times ignorant about them? What grievous folly to neglect the things which might be profitable and obligatory while as a substitute turning our minds to harmful curiosities! In this, now we have eyes but don’t see” (The Imitation of Christ, emphasis added).
Embrace the Reality of Jesus Christ.
Above all, a disproportionate amount of theorizing about how the mysteries of tornadoes and cicadas and 5G (and one million other things) are connected to the approaching end of the world doesn’t bring us the peace or joy that God intends us to have once we take into consideration that ending. From a child who grew up in church hearing concerning the countless scenarios of the tip times on a consistent basis, they made me more terrified than anything. So in an echo of some of the essential New Testament passages on the subject, let me remind you the way we should always feel concerning the end of the world.
“But since we belong to the day, allow us to be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God didn’t appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us in order that, whether we’re awake or asleep, we may live along with him. Therefore encourage each other and construct one another up, just as in reality you’re doing.” – I Thessalonians 5:8-11 NIV (emphasis mine)
Are cicadas an indication of the tip of the world? Probably not. But should we be encouraged concerning the life God has given us today, even amid the chaos, in addition to the life to return? Definitely.
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Jeff Herge
A nerdy humorist at heart, John is a former History teacher who has been featured on Good Morning America and diverse other shows and podcasts. On his weekly podcast, Talk About That, John goes toe-to-toe with best friend and comedian Jonnie W. in hilariously real and genuinely insightful conversations about life, history, current culture, faith—and the whole lot in between. He earned a B.A. in History and a M.S. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Tennessee. He lives near Nashville along with his wife and daughter, where he has served as an executive and teaching pastor at The Church At Pleasant Grove for over twenty years.
